THE CLIMATE

GLOBAL WARMING

· Man-made greenhouse climate

is set to get hotter and hotter

Although the greenhouse effect is a naturally occurring phenomenon, greenhouse gas levels have increased by 25% in the last century, largely due to industrial activity and deforestation. Infrared radiation emitted from Earth into spaces is trapped by these greenhouse gases and reflected back to Earth. The Earth is getting hotter, with an average temperature rise of 0.5°C over the last century models suggest that by 2100 the Earth’s average temperature will have increased by 2°C, with sea levels rising by 50 cm due to water expansion and the melting of land based ice.

· New ice age to balance

out global warming

Swiss researchers at the University of Bern predict that the greenhouse effect will make Great Britain colder by turning off the warm Gulf Stream. This north flowing, warm and salty current will be diluted by fresh water running off the North American continent and out of the Arctic due to global warming.

FORECASTS

· Earth Simulator Program

hopes to help solve it all

NEC in Japan is developing the world’s fastest parallel processing computer to run a Virtual Earth program intended to help resolve environmental problems. The Earth Simulator Program, promoted by the Science and to be completed by 2002, will investigate environment problems and propose solution to avoid natural disasters.

· Drilling into Antarctica

for a climate prediction

Teams from the US, Europe, Japan and Australia are drilling at depths of up to 3 km below the surface of the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland to obtain ancient ice containing information about how the climate operated more than 110,000 years ago. Initial results from this research indicate that climate changes in the past may often have been rapid and dramatic, temperatures around the North Atlantic fluctuated by 14°C during the millennia that preceded the last ice Age, which began about 130,000 years ago.

MYSTERIES

· Ball lightning

somehow captured in flight

For centuries meteorologists have been disputing whether ball lightning exists, and, if so, what it could be. On 21 Aug 1996, researchers were monitoring the top of a thunderstorm in Sarpy County, Nebraska, USA, and captured a ball of light in six video frames, whose velocity was timed at 4,660 km/s.

· Sprites flash from the

tops of storm clouds

Captured on video by John R. Winkler, at the University of Minnesota, USA, sprites, a species of lightning, are caused when the upper part of a thundercloud, usually positively charged, disperses itself in a large electrical field created between the top of the cloud and the ionosphere. This crates intense flashes at altitudes up to 50-90 km.

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